Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Got dynamo?

Of bicycle lights and horns.

Bicycles in Germany are legally required to have a dynamo, only racing bikes are exempt.

Unless you are very old or are an even older soccer fan, you may never have heard of dynamos. Or did you think dynamo was Dixie speak for dynamite?

It's that thing that generates electricity when you ride and powers your lights.

Which means, even electric bicycles are legally required to have it.

And when you stop, you have no light.

Hence, everybody uses battery powered lights anyway.

Some people want to change that, but -- this is Germany, so it'll take a while.

The other subject re bikes is a report about a technological breakthrough: car horn sound for bicycles. A cool electronic gadget -- Developed by German engineers!

Have they not heard of the compressed air + cheap plastic horn that makes your bicycle sound like an 18 wheeler straight out of trucking bliss movie Convoy?

We have brought vehicles 200 times as heavy as our bicycle to a dead stop with this cheap device and instilled unholy fear in negligent van drivers.

We are getting to know the host country mentality better, so we assume there is some law that forbids bicycles to mimic truck horns.


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